The Ride

Some welcome time apart for Graham (it's multicoloured because it's a link) and the saddle today, whilst we pottered around the wholly underwhelming tourist sites of Hohhot: a pagoda with a bouncy castle, a mosque with neon TV screens and a museum with taxidermy so bad my phone couldn't focus accurately enough to take a photo. All in addition to having a smelly hotel room and a terrible lunch.

It comes to something when a city's best feature is its affable taxi drivers. Come to Hohhot to go the surrounding mountains and plains but only sleep and eat hot pot in the city.

But you know what? They've got a Pizza Hut and I've got 145km to cycle into the wind tomorrow, which is a balanced equation if ever I've seen one.

On returning to the hotel after pizza, one of my worst fears was realised. The bike had gone from outside the hotel. With panic improving my Mandarin by anything up to 20% I managed to establish that two men had put it in the staff quarters for one reason or another. I am eternally grateful to all my teachers at That's Mandarin for getting enough blood from the stone that is my linguistic ability to sort this situation out.